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The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music

The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music. Part Three: Nations and Musical Traditions, Middle Latin America, Kuna. Overview. Kuna (Cuna) Comprised of several slightly different cultural groups sharing common language

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The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music

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  1. The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music Part Three: Nations and Musical Traditions, Middle Latin America, Kuna

  2. Overview • Kuna (Cuna) • Comprised of several slightly different cultural groups sharing common language • Located along rivers in Northern Colombia, Eastern Panama and Caribbean coast, and San Blas Islands • Waterways significant to Kuna • Both in terms of livelihood and as a metaphorical concept • Place emphasis on communication • Music a primary means of communication • This aspect also evident in other Amerindian musical traditions (compare with the Tarahumara, and later chapters on lowland and highland Amerindian traditions) • Vocal and instrumental music genres predominate • Developed notation for memorization of extended chant • Unique among other Amerindian communities

  3. Kuna Musical Thinking • Beliefs and music • Music intimately linked to Kuna cosmology • Instruments sacred and social • Notions of musical/cultural change also reflect Kuna beliefs • Traditions continually adapting • Intimate connection between past and present • New ways emerge from ancestral voices

  4. Kuna Musical Thinking • Kuna concept of music • No Kuna equivalent for Western concept of music • Igar (igala; “way” or “path”) • Refers to most vocal genres • Linked with communication • Specific musical and linguistic conventions associated with each genre • Learned through formal apprenticeship • Non-igar vocal genres distinguished in terms of musical and linguistic conventions • Intimate connection between genres, formal music structure, performance practice, style of dancing, and context

  5. Musical Instruments, Contexts, and Genres • Musical Instruments • Represented by Aerophones and idiophones only • Aerophones primarily trumpets, flutes, and panpipes • Two types of panpipes (bound and unbound) • Panpipes organized and performed in complex ways • i.e., Sets of two, three, or six organized either hierarchically, as complementary male-female pairs, or as like members • Contexts and Genres • Primarily vocal • Including heightened speech (i.e., chant), and improvised singing • Reflects connection between beliefs and music (i.e., music as communication) • Association between genre and instruments • Genres also reflect social identity (i.e., gender, age, etc.) • i.e., chanting for healing, narrating history, and for puberty and funeral rites purview of adult males, requires specialized knowledge

  6. Music and Beliefs • Music, communication, and acculturation • Sandra Smith outlines the relationship between Kuna beliefs and concepts about music, emphasizing the significance of communication for the Kuna • Consider the following questions: • How do Kuna conceptions of music and their use of music reflect Kuna ideas about communication? • How is the Kuna notion of cultural change linked to Kuna beliefs and notions of communication? • What implications do Kuna beliefs and notions of musical change have for our understanding of identity, tradition, and the relationship between past and present?

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